State Dept. to Senate: What’s the Bleeding Hold Up on Our Ambassadors?

Fed up with the Senate’s inaction on a slew of ambassadorial nominations, the State Department press office got a little passive-aggressive with the upper chamber on Friday. The department distributed statistics to its press list showing how long its nominees have been waiting for confirmation votes. And the list makes for eye-rolling reading. Some 65 ...

Fed up with the Senate’s inaction on a slew of ambassadorial nominations, the State Department press office got a little passive-aggressive with the upper chamber on Friday.

The department distributed statistics to its press list showing how long its nominees have been waiting for confirmation votes. And the list makes for eye-rolling reading. Some 65 nominations are pending in the Senate, 39 of which have made it out of committee and onto the Senate floor. Of the 65, 26 are stuck in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Of those who have been waiting more than a year, the most pressing is arguably John Hoover, nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Sierra Leone. That country has been hard-hit by the Ebola outbreak and the country would surely be well-served by having a Senate-approved envoy in place.